Sudan Tribune: Plural news and views on Sudan > Comment & Analysis > Conflict in the Heglig region of South Kordofan: Implications Conflict in the Heglig region of South Kordofan: Implications Thursday 29 March 2012 By Eric Reeves March 28, 2012 - The implications of very recent military actions by Khartoum's Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), including paramilitary militia forces, are not yet fully clear. And indeed the greater the level of violence in the largely inaccessible border regions between (northern) Sudan and South Sudan, the less clear the situation will become---the "fog of war" will descend ever more fully. Nonetheless, on the basis of past actions and statements by the regime in Khartoum and by the Juba government, much can be discerned in what has been reported to date by wire services, which, while largely dependent on statements by the belligerents, also have important independent confirmations of particular claims, including from the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) seizure of Heglig on March 26, 2012, well inside South Kordofan, is a highly significant event, even as all evidence suggests that it is the result of an SPLA defensive counter-attack following SAF incursions to the south. Given the potential for rapidly expanding war, involving direct conflict between the SAF and the SPLA, we should be as clear as possible about the antecedents to any such future violence. Present military actions have already led Khartoum to suspend, perhaps with an eye to cancelation, the "summit" that was to have taken place in Juba beginning April 3 between President Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Khartoum's President Omar al-Bashir. The focus was to have been on outstanding issues between Khartoum and Juba that remain a source of tension and potential military violence. The cause and effect relationship here, however, is not clear. As several analysts have suggested today, it may well be that SAF generals launched these attacks in order to sabotage any true diplomatic rapprochement between north and South Sudan. This is apparently the view of President Kiir, who was overheard saying yesterday, "'There are people of course who don't want Bashir's visit,' Kiir said in an Arabic aside on Monday in an audio recording of his remarks obtained by McClatchy. 'These are the people who are causing this fighting'" (McClatchy New [Nairobi] March 27, 2012). In any event, the seriousness of the events was underscored by the fact that the military seizure of a large area near Heglig was announced by President Kiir himself. Certainly we may be sure that if he had not been confident of what he declared, he would not have spoken himself and events would have been reported through a spokesman. Here it should also be noted that there are quite distinct track records on the part spokespersons for Khartoum and for Juba. Khartoum's primary military spokesman, Al-Sawarmi Khalid Saad, is a shameless liar and represents a regime that has only contempt for truths that are not self-serving. If we look back at statements by Saad over the past couple of years, we can see that on countless occasions---whether in speaking about Darfur, Abyei, South Kordofan, or events along the North/South border---his claims and denials have been decisively disproved by follow-up investigations. For example, following the November 10, 2011 aerial bombardment of Yida refugee camp---an attack well inside Unity State (South Sudan) and witnessed first-hand by two international news organizations, and later confirmed by UN investigators---Saad was adamant in his denial of SAF responsibility: "Sudan Armed Forces spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad vehemently denied any links to the raid. 'This information is completely false. We didn't bomb any camps or any areas inside the borders of South Sudan,' he told the AFP news agency. 'What is going on in South Sudan belongs to the southerners. We don't have any links to this.'" (Agence France-Presse, November 10, 2011) Unsurprisingly, given such shameless mendacity, it is Saad who has been the chief spokesman for all recent military events. The SPLA by contrast, has on occasion exaggerated or misrepresented events; but there seem to have been few occasions of pure fabrication. This is but one more asymmetry between Khartoum and Juba that must be kept in mind in sorting through recent events. The task is especially important given Khartoum's relentless efforts to conflate two now clearly distinguishable military organizations: the SPLA of South Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) in the northern states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile (the SPLA-N is also part of the Sudan Revolutionary Front [SRF], which includes Darfur rebel groups). Khartoum has done all it can to obfuscate the distinction between the SPLA and the SPLA-N, and has repeatedly accused the SPLA of supporting the SPLA-N or of undertaking military actions that are in fact those of the SPLA-N. And in a misguided concession to Khartoum, various international actors have accepted this conflation largely at face value. Thus following Khartoum's late February aerial attack on oil infrastructure deep within Unity State (South Sudan), the UN Security Council "demanded" (March 6, 2012): " ... that all parties cease military operations in the border areas and put an end to the cycle of violence. It further demands that the Governments of Sudan and South Sudan take no action that would undermine the security and stability of the other, including through any direct or indirect form of support to armed groups in the other’s territory." (all emphases in quotations have been added) On March 27 the Security Council, always threatened by a Chinese or Russian veto on matters relating to Sudan, preserved its perfect "equanimity" in a statement on current fighting: "The Security Council calls upon the governments of Sudan and South Sudan to exercise maximum restraint and sustain purposeful dialogue in order to address peacefully the issues that are fuelling the mistrust between the two countries." At the same time that the Security Council was blaming both sides for Khartoum's earlier aerial attacks of late February, the U.S. State Department---without adducing a scrap of evidence to support its broader assessment---declared (March 1): "The United States continues to stress to the Government of South Sudan the need to respect the sovereignty of Sudan and immediately end any military support for Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North rebels. The actions of both parties are inflaming conflict, fuelling mistrust, and imperiling the efforts of the African Union High-level Implementation Panel to facilitate agreements between the parties on outstanding Comprehensive Peace Agreement issues." No matter that the African Union High-level Implementation Panel has proved hopelessly inept in its diplomatic roles---in Darfur, in dealing with the Abyei crisis, and in securing either a cease-fire or humanitarian access for Blue Nile and South Kordofan ... more than nine months after Khartoum's initial onslaught against Kadugli and other areas of South Kordofan. And no matter that there is no specification of which "actions" by the SPLA (as opposed to the SPLA-N) are "inflaming conflict." As to mistrust, it is simply preposterous to speak of "trust" and the Khartoum regime in the same breath: these ruthless men have not abided by a single one of the countless agreements they have signed over 23 years in power, with the South or any other Sudanese party. When US special envoy Princeton Lyman glibly suggests with that there is a lack of confidence between the two parties negotiating in Addis Ababa, Khartoum and Juba, he offers only a facile and dangerous half-truth. For its part the European Union (March 8): " ... chided both Sudan and South Sudan for having taken 'unilateral' steps that are hindering peace talks between the two sides. 'The unilateral steps taken by both sides have made it more difficult to reach a negotiated solution,' Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said in a statement. Ashton 'is seriously concerned about the escalation of violence and continued cross-border military activity including military operations, support for proxy militias and aerial bombing,' Mann said." Again, no evidence is provided of substantial assistance by Juba to "proxy" forces in northern Sudan; no specific "unilateral" actions by the SPLA are indicated in the EU statement; and there is no recognition of the ample evidence that the escalation of violence is dictated by Khartoum's, not Juba's, military actions and movements along the North/South border. Here we should bear in mind that the South has no offensive ambitions, if only for reasons of self-preservation. It does not need additional northern oil reserves, even as it remains the case that an economically distressed Khartoum is desperate for the oil revenues it lost with Southern independence. Certainly the evidence of the last year and a half consistently shows a remarkable restraint on the part of the Southern government in the face of relentless military provocations, including not only repeated aerial attacks on its territory, cross-border ground assaults, and the bombing of refugees, but Khartoum's military seizure of Abyei (May 2011)---a seizure contravening not only the Abyei Protocol of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005), but the "final and binding" ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (July 2009). Perversely, this international restraint